Saturday, July 10, 2010

After my second visit during my clinical trial study, I left with some goals set by my health professional and myself:

1) Reduce the iron in my body - eat less red meat, donate blood.My progress: I am drinking filtered water as opposed to tap water as I believe this may be the reason for the high iron content in my blood.

2) Eat more servings of fruit and vegetables per day. My progress: I bought lots of fruits to increase my serving sizes per day. I take fruit with me to work every morning.

3) Increase vitamin D - take vitamin D supplements dailyMy progress: I have a bottle of Vitamin D and I take 1000 mg (one tablet) daily.

4) Perform cardio exercises 3 times per weekMy progress: this was the least exciting goal we set for me. I had cardio (running, etc). Seemed boring to me. I thought to myself, as with anything I do, how can I make cardio fun? I went to the Nike store to buy the Nike + iPod shoes so that real-time time/distance/calorie information can be streamed to my phone during every run. After my first run, I had my first "runner's rush" - I was hooked ever since and enjoy running. I am doing short 30 minute runs at the highest elevation on the treadmill.

I am interested in seeing how my heart rate responds in my next clinical trials visit...

The cool part about the Nike + iPod technology is the ability to report my workout information and stream this info online for me to access. Nikeplus.com has many oops to get you more involved and engaged in your cardio workouts - like "run with friends" and "train like a pro."

Learning lesson: no matter how much you do not enjoy a task given to you, try to make it fun and engaging for yourself! You'll find yourself enjoying the very things you rejected and denounced in the beginning - this goes for your professional and personal life.

Thursday, July 1, 2010

So I was surfing the app store on my iPhone and saw an interesting app called JotNot Pro. It boasted scanning capability. I was skeptical at first but then read the amazing reviews about this app. I went ahead and bought the app for under $3 and have been using it at work.

If coworkers leave me hand written notes, I scan the note using JotNot and it converts the scanned image (from the iPhone camera) into a PDF which I attach to email and reference in my feedback response.

As far as healthcare goes, it would be nice to incorporate this scanning application to convert clinical documentation into PDFs so information can be stored easily or transmitted easily - while maintaining HIPAA rules of course. Looking forward to the iPad 2 which will have picture/video functionality to make this possible and more interactive and user friendly.

It completely replaces the need to fax and keep paper lying around the office. It's simply...fun to use.

To use JotNot, you take a picture of the document with your iPhone. Then you crop the document out (this helps if there are other items in the picture like coffee cups, other docs, etc). Finally, convert the document to a PDF and save! All of this is done in one app - really quickly! Try it out.

Check out more on this app:http://techcrunch.com/2009/03/17/jotnot-turns-your-iphones-camera-into-a-document-scanner/

Search This Blog

About Me

I was born in Trinidad and Tobago and left to live in Mexico City when I was 14. I then moved to Atlanta at 17 and finished my last year of high school. I then graduated from the University of Georgia while pursuing a dual major in Biology and Spanish, and then a Masters in Public Health. Now I work at Emory Healthcare in Atlanta.
Disclaimer: My blog posts are my own opinions and not those shared by my employer.